by P. D. James
Miss Sharpe was impressed despite herself, but remarked merely that people who went on working when they had thirty thousand wanted their brains examined.
“What would you do, Bea? Do you think I ought to say anything?” Sister Ambrose, sturdily independent and used to settling her own affairs, recognized that this decision was beyond her and threw half the burden on her friend. Both of them knew that the moment was unique. Never had two friends made fewer demands on each other.
Miss Sharpe sat in silence for a moment or two, then said: “No. Not yet, anyway. After all she is your colleague and you trust her. It wasn’t your fault that you overheard the conversation but it was only overhearing. It was only chance that you happened to be in the loo. I should try to forget it. The police will find out how Bolam has left her money anyway and whether the will has been changed. Either way Nurse Bolam will be suspected. And if it should come to a trial—I’m only saying ‘if,’ remember—well, you don’t want to get involved unnecessarily. Remember those nurses in the Eastbourne case, the hours they spent in the box. You wouldn’t want that kind of publicity.”
Indeed she wouldn’t, thought Sister Ambrose. Her imagination set the scene only too vividly. Sir Somebody or Other would be prosecuting, tall, beak-nosed, bending his terrifying gaze on her, thumbs hooked in the bands of his gown.
“And now, Sister Ambrose, perhaps you will tell his Lordship and the jury what you were doing when you overheard this conversation between the accused and her cousin.”
Titters in court. The judge, terrifying in scarlet and white wig, leans down from his seat.
“If there is any more of this laughter I shall clear the court.” Silence. Sir Somebody on the ball again.
“Well, Sister Ambrose …?”
No, she certainly wouldn’t want that kind of publicity. “I think you’re right, Bea,” she said. “After all, it’s not as if the superintendent actually asked me whether I’d ever overheard them quarrelling.” Certainly he hadn’t and, with luck, he never would.
Miss Sharpe felt that it was time to change the subject. “How did Dr. Steiner take it?” she asked. “You always said that he was working to get Bolam moved to another unit.”
“That’s another extraordinary thing! He was terribly upset. You know I told you that he was with us when we first saw the body? D’you know he could hardly control himself? He had to turn his back on us and I could see his shoulders shaking. He was actually crying, I think. I’ve never seen him so upset. Aren’t people extraordinary, Bea?”
It was a vehement cry of resentment and protest. People were extraordinary! You thought you knew them. You worked with them, sometimes for years. You spent more time with them than you would with family or close friends. You knew every line of their faces. And all the time they were private. As private as Dr. Steiner who cried over the dead body of a woman he had never liked. As private as Dr. Baguley who had been having a love affair with Fredrica Saxon for years with no one knowing until Miss Bolam found out and told his wife. As private as Miss Bolam who had taken God knows what secrets to the grave. Miss Bolam, dull, ordinary, unremarkable Enid Bolam, who had inspired so much hate in someone that she had ended with a chisel in her heart. As private as that unknown member of the staff who would be at the clinic on Monday morning, dressed as usual, looking the same as usual, speaking and smiling as usual and who was a murderer.
“Damned smiling villain!” said Sister Ambrose suddenly. She thought that the phrase was a quotation from some play or other. Shakespeare probably. Most quotations were. But its terse malevolence suited her mood.
“What you need is food,” said Miss Sharpe positively. “Something light and nourishing. Suppose we leave the casserole until tomorrow night and just have boiled eggs on a tray?”
She was waiting for him at the entrance to St James’s Park just as he had expected her to be. As he crossed the mall and saw the slight figure drooping a little disconsolately by the war memorial, Nagle could almost feel sorry for her. It was the hell of a raw night to be standing about. But her first words killed any impulse to pity.
“We should have met somewhere else. This is all right for you, of course. You’re on the way home.” She sounded as peevish as a neglected wife.
“Come back to the flat, then,” he taunted her softly. “We can get a bus down.”
“No. Not the flat. Not tonight.” He smiled into the darkness and they moved together into the black shadow of the trees. They walked a little way apart and she made no move towards him. He glanced down at the calm, uplifted profile cleansed now of all traces of crying. She looked desperately tired.
Suddenly she said: “That superintendent is very good-looking, isn’t he? Do you think he suspects us?”
So here it was, the grasping at reassurance, the childish need to be protected. And yet she had sounded almost uncaring. He said roughly: “For God’s sake why should he? I was out of the clinic when she died. You know that as well as I do.”
“But I wasn’t. I was there.”
“No one’s going to suspect you for long. The doctors will see to that. We’ve had all this out before. Nothing can go wrong if you keep your head and listen to me. Now this is what I want you to do.”
She listened as meekly as a child but, watching that tired, expressionless face, he felt that he was in the company of a stranger. He wondered idly whether they would ever get free of each other again. And suddenly he felt that it was not she who was the victim.
As they came to the lake, she stopped and gazed out over the water. Out of the darkness came the subdued cry and shuffle of ducks. He could smell the evening breeze, salty as a sea wind, and shivered. Turning to study her face, ravaged now with fatigue, he saw, in his mind’s eye, another picture: a broad brow under a white nurse’s cap, a swathe of yellow hair, immense grey eyes which gave nothing away. Tentatively he pondered a new idea. It might come to nothing, of course. It might easily come to nothing. But the picture would soon be finished and he could get rid of Jenny. In a month he would be in Paris but Paris was only an hour’s flight away and he would be coming back often. And with Jenny out of the way and a new life in his grasp, it would be worth trying. There were worse fates than marrying the heiress to thirty thousand pounds.
Nurse Bolam let herself into the narrow terraced house at 17 Rettinger Street, NW1, and was met by the familiar ground-floor smell compounded of frying fat, furniture polish and stale urine. The twins’ pram stood behind the door with its stained under blanket thrown across the handle. The smell of cooking was less strong than usual. She was very late tonight and the ground-floor tenants must long have finished their evening meal. The wail of one of the babies sounded faintly from the back of the house, almost drowned by the noise of the television. She could hear the national anthem. The BBC service was closing for the day.
She mounted to the first floor. Here the smell of food was fainter and was masked by the tang of a household disinfectant. The first-floor tenant was addicted to cleanliness as the basement tenant was to drink. There was the usual note on the landing window ledge. Tonight it read: “Do not stand your dirty milk bottles here. This ledge is private. This means you.” From behind the brown polished door, even at this late hour, came the roar of a vacuum cleaner in full throttle.
Up now to the third floor, to their own flat. She paused on the bottom step of the last flight and saw, as if with a stranger’s eyes, the pathetic attempt she had made to improve the look of the place. The walls here were painted with white emulsion paint. The stairs were covered with a grey drugget. The door was painted a bright citrus yellow and sported a brass knocker in the shape of a frog’s head. On the wall, carefully disposed one above the other, were the three flower prints she had picked up in Berwick Street market. Until tonight she had been pleased with the result of her work. It really had given the entrance quite an air. There had been times when she had felt that a visitor, Mrs. Bostock from the clinic, perhaps, or even Sister Ambrose, might safely be invited home for
coffee without the need to apologize or explain. But tonight, freed, gloriously freed forever from the self-deceit of poverty, she could see the flat for what it was, sordid, dark, airless, smelly and pathetic. Tonight, for the first time, she could safely recognize how much she hated every brick of 17 Rettinger Street.
She trod very softly, still not ready to go in. There was so little time in which to think, in which to plan. She knew exactly what she would see when she opened the door of her mother’s room. The bed stood against the window. In summer evenings Mrs. Bolam could lie and watch the sun setting behind a castellation of sloping roofs and twisting chimneys with, in the distance, the turrets of St. Pancras Station darkening against a flaming sky. Tonight the curtains would be drawn. The district nurse would have put her mother to bed, would have left the telephone and portable wireless on the bedside table, together with the handbell which could, if necessary, summon aid from the tenant of the flat below. Her mother’s bedside lamp would be lit, a small pool of light in the surrounding gloom. At the other end of the room one bar of the electric fire would be burning, one bar only, the nicely calculated allocation of comfort for an October evening. As soon as she opened the door, her mother’s eyes would meet her, brightened by pleasure and anticipation. There would be the same intolerably bright greeting, the same minute inquiries about the doings of the day.
“Did you have a good day at the clinic, darling? Why were you late? Did anything happen?”
And how did one answer that? “Nothing of any importance, Mummy, except that someone has stabbed Cousin Enid through the heart and we’re going to be rich after all.”
And what did that mean? Dear God, what didn’t it mean? No more smell of polish and napkins. No more need to propitiate the second-floor harpy in case she were needed to answer that bell. No more watching the electricity meter and wondering whether it was really cold enough for that extra bar of the fire. No more thanking Cousin Enid for her generous cheque twice a year, the one in December that made such a difference to Christmas, the one late in July that paid for the hired car and the expensive hotel which catered for invalids who could afford to pay for being a nuisance. No longer any need to count the days, to watch the calendar, to wonder whether Enid was going to oblige this year. No need to take the cheque with becoming gratitude to conceal behind lowered eyes the hate and resentment that longed to tear it up and throw it in that smug, plain, condescending face. No need to climb these stairs any more. They could have the house in a suburb which her mother talked about. One of the better-class suburbs, of course, near enough to London for easy travelling to the clinic—it wouldn’t be wise to give up the job before she really had to—but far enough out for a small garden, perhaps, even for a country view. They might even afford a little car. She could learn to drive. And then, when it was no longer possible for her mother to be left, they could be together. It meant the end of this nagging anxiety about the future. There was no reason now to picture her mother in a chronic sick ward, cared for by overworked strangers, surrounded by the senile and incontinent, waiting hopelessly for the end. And money could buy less vital but not unimportant pleasures. She would get some clothes. It would no longer be necessary to wait for the biennial sales if she wanted a suit with some evidence of quality. It would be possible to dress well, really well, on half the amount Enid had spent on those unattractive skirts and suits. There must be wardrobes full of them in the Kensington flat. Someone would have the job of sorting them out. And who would want them? Who would want anything that had belonged to Cousin Enid? Except her money. Except her money. Except her money. And suppose she had already written to her solicitor about changing the will. Surely that wasn’t possible! Nurse Bolam fought down panic and forced herself once again to consider the possibility rationally. She had thought it out so many times before. Suppose Enid had written on Wednesday night. All right, suppose she had. It would be too late to catch the post that evening so the letter would have been received only this morning. Everyone knew how long solicitors took to do anything. Even if Enid had stressed the urgency, had caught the Wednesday post, the new will couldn’t possibly be ready for signature yet. And if it were ready, if it were waiting to be posted in its solid, official-looking envelope, what did it matter? Cousin Enid wouldn’t sign it now with that round, upright, unadult hand which had always seemed so typical of her. Cousin Enid would never sign anything again.
She thought again about the money. Not about her own share. That was hardly likely to bring her happiness now. But even if they arrested her for murder, they couldn’t stop Mummy inheriting her share. No one could stop that. But somehow she must get hold of some cash urgently. Everyone knew that a will took months to prove. Would it look very suspicious or heartless if she went to Enid’s solicitor to explain how poor they were and to ask what could be arranged? Or would it be wiser to approach the bank? Perhaps the solicitor would send for her. Yes, of course he would. She and her mother were the next of kin. And as soon as the will was read, she could tactfully raise the question of an advance. Surely that would be natural enough? An advance of one hundred pounds wouldn’t be much to ask by someone who was going to inherit a share of thirty thousand.
Suddenly she could bear it no longer. The long tension broke. She wasn’t conscious of covering those last few stairs, of putting her key in the lock. At once she was in the flat and through to her mother’s room. Howling with fear and misery, crying as she had not cried since childhood, she hurled herself on her mother’s breast and felt around her the comfort and the unexpected strength of those brittle, shaking arms. The arms rocked her like a baby. The beloved voice cooed its reassurance. Under the cheap nightdress she smelt the soft familiar flesh.
“Hush, my darling. My baby. Hush. What is it? What’s happened. Tell me, darling.”
And Nurse Bolam told her.
Since his divorce two years earlier Dr. Steiner had shared a house in Hampstead with his widowed sister. He had his own sitting room and kitchen, an arrangement which enabled Rosa and him to see little of each other, thus fostering the illusion that they got on well together. Rosa was a culture snob. Her house was the centre for a collection of resting actors, one-volume poets, aesthetes posing on the fringe of the ballet world and writers more anxious to talk about their craft in an atmosphere of sympathetic understanding than to practise it. Dr. Steiner did not resent them. He merely ensured that they ate and drank at Rosa’s expense, not his. He was aware that his profession had a certain cachet for his sister and that to introduce “my brother Paul—the famous psycho-analyst”—was in some measure a compensation for the low rent which he spasmodically paid and the minor irritations of propinquity. He would hardly have been housed so economically and comfortably had he been a bank manager.
Tonight Rosa was out. It was exasperating and inconsiderate of her to be missing on the one evening when he needed her company, but that was typical of Rosa. The German maid was out, too, presumably illicitly since Friday was not her half day. There was soup and salad put ready for him in his kitchen, but even the effort of heating the soup seemed beyond him. The sandwiches he had eaten without relish at the clinic had taken away his appetite but left him hungry for protein, preferably hot and properly cooked. But he did not want to eat alone. Pouring himself a glass of sherry he recognized his need to talk to someone—anyone—about the murder. The need was imperative. He thought of Valda.
His marriage to Valda had been doomed from the start, as any marriage must be when husband and wife have a basic ignorance of each other’s needs coupled with the illusion that they understand each other perfectly. Dr. Steiner had not been desolated by his divorce but he had been inconvenienced and distressed and had been harried afterwards by an irrational sense of failure and guilt. Valda, on the other hand, apparently throve on freedom. When they met, he was always struck with her glow of physical well-being. They did not avoid each other, since meeting her ex-husband and discarded lovers with the greatest appearance of friendliness and good humour was w
hat Valda meant when she talked about civilized behaviour. Dr. Steiner did not like or admire her. He liked the company of women who were well-informed, well-educated, intelligent and fundamentally serious. But these were not the kind of women he liked to go to bed with. He knew all about this inconvenient dichotomy. Its causes had occupied many expensive hours with his analyst. Unfortunately, knowing is one thing and changing is another, as some of his patients could have told him. And there had been times with Valda (christened Millicent) when he hadn’t really wanted to be different.
The telephone rang for about a minute before she answered and he told her about Miss Bolam against a background noise of music and clinking glasses. The flat was apparently full of people. He wasn’t even sure she had heard him.
“What is it?” he asked irritably. “Are you having a party?”
“Just a few chums. Wait while I turn down the gramophone. Now, what did you say?”
Dr. Steiner said it again. This time Valda’s reaction was entirely satisfactory.
“Murdered! No! Darling, how too frightful for you! Miss Bolam. Isn’t she that dreary old AO you hated so much? The one who kept trying to do you down over your travelling claims?”
“I didn’t hate her, Valda. In some ways I respected her. She had considerable integrity. Of course, she was rather obsessional, frightened of her own subconscious aggressions, possibly sexually frigid …”
“That’s what I said, darling. I knew you couldn’t bear her. Oh, Paulie, they won’t think you did it, will they?”
“Of course not,” said Dr. Steiner, beginning to regret his impulse to confide.
“But you always did say that someone should get rid of her.” The conversation was beginning to have a nightmare quality. The gramophone thudded its insistent bass to the treble cacophony of Valda’s party and the pulse in Dr. Steiner’s temple beat in unison. He was going to start one of his headaches.
“I meant that she should be transferred to another clinic, not bashed on the head with a blunt instrument.”
